Virtual worlds provide companies opportunities for valuable co-creation and co-production with their customers. In order to harness this potential, companies need to design effective entry strategies for virtual customer relationship management or vCRM. ...

We describe our on-going work on Virtual Stage, a karaoke system which incorporates virtual reality technology. A runtime environment and authoring tools for interactive scenarios have been designed and implemented. We adopt a scenario-based representation ...

Spatial collaboration is an everyday activity in which people work together to solve a spatial problem. For example, a group of people will often arrange furniture together or exchange directions with one another. Collaborative virtual environments using ...

The virtual environment research community is focusing on the human computer interaction model for fully articulated 3D humans in the networked virtual environment. As that work moves forward there is the desire to internetwork large numbers of players. ...

In this paper, we present the design and implementation of the VRML97 Distributed Authoring Interface (DAI) introduced in Spin-3D, a distributed Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE). Our proposal is a powerful interface, very close to the classical ...

This paper introduces the work done to improve on a sophisticated Underwater Robotic Vehicle (URV) inspection and repair system for submerged structures. It is undertaken as part of a research programme grant to pursue research and development of technologies ...

In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework for every-citizen learning communities based on a recently widespread Internet tool known as Multi-user dimension Object-Oriented (MOO). We discuss the design and development of a prototype system of the ...

A distributed PHANToM-based system for collaborative haptic visualization of a VR crank is presented. Physical 1DOF crank model providing realistic kinaesthetic sensations of inertia and viscosity is described. Theoretical and experimental kinematic ...

We propose the Hierarchical Degree-of-Visibility (HDoV) tree to support real-time visualization of large VEs. Each node in an HDoV tree represents a spatial region in the scene, and contains a precomputed Degree-of-Visibility value. In run-time, the ...

Nonverbal emotion interaction is very important for children, learning nonverbal emotion interaction by computer technology is an interesting subject. In a certain intelligent virtual environment (IVE), multi virtual characters interact with emotion ...

We present a system for a conceptual design session in the desktop Virtual Environment (DVE) and Computer Aided Design (CAD). We consider easy modification to be important for conceptual sessions, as users alter the design frequently in those sessions. ...

Acrophobia is a scientific term used to describe the fear of height. To some people, this fear is manageable, but to others, the fear could pose danger to their life if it starts to interfere with their day to day activities. The conventional treatment ...

This paper presents a physics-based model of the Lap-bandreg (Inamed Health) system for simulation of laparoscopic gastric banding (LAGB) operation. The Lap-bandreg has different mechanical properties along the centerline due to different thickness and ...

In this paper we present a novel approach to the simulation of interactive gaseous phenomena. Our main emphasis is put on real-time simulation and the visual correct interaction of the gas with inserted objects. In contrast to methods based on the numerical ...

This paper introduces a hybrid agent-architecture for situated agents representing pedestrians in virtual environments. The presented agent architecture is an extension of a model supporting the definition of environments encompassing situated agents, ...

We propose a taxonomy of Web agents, which encompasses agents that provide a text-based interface to, for example, information retrieval services as well as avatar-embodied guides that help visitors to navigate in virtual environments. Our taxonomy must ...

We present ongoing research on intelligent knowledge management (KM) environments supporting communication in a virtual environment. An agent community handles the interaction between knowledge sources of different degrees of formality and knowledge ...

This paper presents a distributed virtual environment that supports collaboration among members of a geographically dispersed multidisciplinary team engaged in concurrent product development. The distributed virtual environment maintains a shared information ...

Shadow can strengthen the reality of 3D virtual scene and provide important visual information for the objects' spacial relationship in the scene. This paper presents a GPU based method for all the process of shadow volume algorithm. It can achieve greater ...

In this paper we present an approach for a full cycle product customization in Virtual Environments (VE). The main goal of our work is to develop an integrated immersive framework, which allows configuring products from a great number of parts. Our framework ...